Clio Cloud Conference 2014: Day 1

Fifteen years ago, I was sitting in the middle of what was then the next big thing in legal. It was the age of “merger mania” and I was working at a venerable old law firm that was about to become part of a new and “improved” law firm. Yes, it was BIG. But what I saw and experienced yesterday was bigger, and better.

Day One of the Clio Cloud Conference was essentially about three things: Innovating, Growing, and Leading. The energy was off the hook. And we expect that to continue today as we enter Day Two. If I may be allowed to quote myself (thanks to Neil Shankman, Clio’s new VP of Marketing, for taking my cheesy little remark and making it part of his opening address—which was tweeted back to me within seconds—thank you, forward-thinking lawyers), “we’ve emerged from the fog and into the cloud”. Clio is a major part of that and we want to be driving that progression. But actually, YOU are driving that.

What did we learn yesterday? I asked a few people on the conference floor. And thanks to the support of lawyers like you, as well as Clio staffers and conference partners, there was more to Day One than just dancing and tweeting. Lots more! Aviva Kaiser, from the State Bar of Wisconsin, first pondered the big question: “How do we implement the changes we need to make to move legal forward? We have this incredible gap between seasoned lawyers who don’t know a lot about technology and younger lawyers who don’t have a lot of practice experience, so transitioning and bridging that gap is the challenge.

With so much energy here at the conference, we have a perfect environment for discussing those challenges and finding solutions that work.” Richard Susskind, author of “Tomorrow’s Lawyers”, was one of our keynote speakers. He discussed the future of law and technology. Ashish Patel from Chicago, summed up Susskind’s keynote for us: “It was very informative. Richard offered a number of innovative ideas that will allow today’s lawyer to know how to use technology for tomorrow. With that mindset, we’ll be set up to lead the future, forever.” Beyond the “Big Ideas”, there were also some Clio-focused solutions discussed. In fact, Suzanne Meehle, a lawyer and Clio user from Florida, told me that the session on document automation was worth three times the price of admission. She learned how to do something in 60 seconds that would typically end up costing a client hundreds of dollars in billable time.

In his opening remarks, Jack Newton, Clio’s CEO, made some important announcements about some of the features we’ve implemented. One of them was an integration with Fastcase. Ed Walters from Fastcase was delighted with the response generated from the announcement of this new and exclusive integration between Fastcase and Clio. “I’ve spoken with a lot of attendees today who are as excited about this integration as we are,” observed Ed. “Fastcase and Clio are changing the game. This is further evidence of the cloud rising to meet and exceed the needs of lawyers and their clients.”

Of course, our motto here is “Ask us anything”—and Tys van Gaza from Clio’s product team demonstrated how we are living up to that: “We got a lot of great suggestions in the Clio Lab for feature improvements. We took the feedback here, sent them to the team back home, and they are already hard at work making it happen. In fact, they have already taken those suggestions and released a few improvements to the product.”

Yes, it really is that exciting here. Chris Yeh, Clio’s Talent Specialist and co-presenter with Zachary Pope, summed up the atmosphere as “electric”. He actually made a slight slip of the tongue when he described the conference theatre room as “the stadium”. Could this be the Olympics, Super Bowl, and World Series of legal tech? We’d like to think so. And apparently, those that carry the torch, land the touchdowns, and bat the home runs for Clio would agree. Peggy Gruenke is one of those people. As a Clio Certified Consultant, the big benefit of attending the conference is the opportunity to connect face-to-face with the people she communicates with daily. And we agree. Having that opportunity to get down to business and help you innovate to grow your firm is what we are all about.

Day Two of the Clio Cloud Conference continues today in Chicago. But let us know what you thought of Day One. Tweet @goclio, comment below, or hashtag it up with #ClioCloud9.